Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c23.s2: Iron Mines of Baragaon, Lamtera & Emliya

c23.s2.1

The mines of *Baragaon*, *Lamtera* and *Emliya* in the pergunnah of Belhari, are situated on the north side of the valley, and it is remarkable that near this ridge, there is a change in the nature of the ore; it lies near the surface embedded in ferruginous sandy clay, and is unconnected with any rock, though the subjacent stratum is *sandstone*; in the two first of these mines, the ore is granular, argillaceous (No.20) in globular grains, about the size of a pea, which are cemented together into a solid mass, by ferruginous clay; the other is the lenticular variety of the same kind of ore (No.21) differing from the former in the size and flatness of its pieces; but its cement is of the same nature, only less hard, and the nodules of ore being more easily separated, appears to give it a superiority over that of Baragaon, the grains of which not being divisible, its ore is perhaps affected by some vitiating property contained in the cement, the metal being very brittle.